


the weight of paper

by Kierkegarden



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Epistolary, F/F, Gender Roles, Genderswap, Grindeldore Holiday Exchange, Grindeldore Holiday Exchange 2018, Literary Remix, Memory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 22:13:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17088695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kierkegarden/pseuds/Kierkegarden
Summary: 5 letters Gertrud Grindelwald didn’t send, and one that she did.





	the weight of paper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [small_light](https://archiveofourown.org/users/small_light/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [the weight of paper](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17451968) by [Go_MrCactus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go_MrCactus/pseuds/Go_MrCactus)



> Hello, hi, happy holidays, small_light! The following work can be a standalone piece but is also a love-letter to two of my favorite literary works of all time. One of these is "Thirty-Five Owls" by Letterblade, the infamous and incandescent epistolary fic that secured my interest in Grindeldore many years ago. The other is "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out" by Richard Siken, my favorite poem ever and also a great source of Grindeldore inspiration and metaphor fodder. I cannot recommend these enough. 
> 
> So, yes, I took your wonderful prompt ideas and somehow made them self indulgent anyway. I only hope that you enjoy it as well.

_1906_

_  
_ A. D. -

I’ve dreamt of you three nights in a row, now. Isn’t that strange? There are some things that dreams, like language, can’t quite replicate - something niggling below the surface of my eyelids that keeps reality a titch from the barrier. Perhaps it’s because even while immersed in them, I know that the dream is fake. Little pieces of reality break through like pinecones underfoot. It’s just like that, more startling than painful. I'm sure you understand.

Uncanny little things; how you only wore lipstick on Sundays when dressing like a muggle for the tiny farm church on the hill, and only purple because your mad brother said red would look funny with your hair.

In the dreams, I confess, you wear a red lip. It’s deeper than your hair and brighter than your robes. You are all red, red as a harvest moon, my cruel, red Lion queen. Red is too honest on you, dear. Do you remember the last time you were honest?

I remember you told me quite bluntly, when we had gotten to know each other well enough, that my prose were terrible. You told me to focus on research, and then the Manifesto. You kissed me softly, then, leaving purple on my brow bone that I didn’t dare scrub away.

You’d like them now, my prose, I promise. Every word I scribble on this parchment, I think you’d like how they’ve purpled, bruised into something dishonest. You’d like my dreams too, and I promise you, Alba, you never look funny in red.  
  
\- G. G.

 

***

 

_1920_

  
  
A. D. -

I start again, with a question. Why _did_ you go to that church every Sunday in the morning with your purple lips and hair tied tight in a bun? Did you fear that the muggles would remember you if you didn’t sit quietly, shy and demure? Did you find your place in the low pews?

“The world is getting larger, Gertrud,” you said, “with bicycles and trains, the British Railway is expanding.”

I fought the urge to huff away. As you watched the Muggle world grow, still somehow starry-eyed, I knew it meant that we would be herded further into the margins. 

Why did it matter to you, if they called you _witch_ below their breath, if they muttered that you were queer? Alba was never a sweet young girl who wore sweaters and paled her face. Only on Sundays.

You paint over it again, in a different color, a stark blue. Your guilt paints you Good, a damsel in a tower. Well, Alba, nothing has changed. We are both looking down.

We watched the world ravaged by war. Do you still love them enough to dress up and dance? My army strikes tomorrow, at Sopron, the town where I was born. By all means, if the stone walls find you lonely, come and make a difference. Of course, I was never going to send this letter anyway.

Well, anyway.

I dreamt of you again this week; we sat in a coach drawn by thestrals. You reached over and held my hand, your face bearing tired creases. Your lips were red.

“Are you nervous, Gertrud?”

I decided to confide, eyes blurring on the lie, as you stared straight ahead. In my dream, you couldn’t see their muscled black bodies or manes flipping like currents at high tide. “A bit nervous, yes, and a bit overdue to watch the tides change.”

It was then that I realized we were on our way to retrieve the final Hallow.

It’s been years, Alba, why do I still see your face?

  
\- G. G.

 

***

 

_1927_

  
  
A. D. -

Red painted blue makes lying, lying purple. That’s the color you are, as you sit all alone in that tower, raking in acclaim and wallowing in your placidity. I’ve realized that you’re no damsel, you’re the dragon and you’ve locked yourself there. Nobody is coming to kill you, Alba, and no one is coming to save you.

Oh, I won’t tell. I love a good secret. Secret kisses on the grave of Ignotus Peverell, secret flicks of a wand as we watched Abrielle chase goats round and round in circles. Now, I can’t send this one, either, can I? I’ve gone and ruined a good thing, like I ruined a good girl. You were such a good girl.

What if I sent it and a huntsman shot the owl and the letter fell - as though from God himself - into his hands? What if he found out that it was Alba Dumbledore herself who coined “For the Greater Good”? What color is on her hands then? Certainly not the blue of powder gloves.

Purple Alba. You don’t wear it well, and as always, it cages you. It’s much more cruel to let you sit with it. If you don’t believe me, I’ll prove it. Let me tell you a secret of my own.

I had a dream last night on your birthday. We were old and flawed and lonely and I told you that I loved you. It was the realest thing I’ve felt in months. When I woke up, I felt nothing but the tower. Death grows like a cage around me and this war I’ve waged feels so unsure. What was it you liked to quote? "I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er"? Which muggle goop spouted that one?

I’m only joking, I know who William Shakespeare is. I’m not daft, Alba, I just don’t like theatre. Life is a drama enough already, as a sibylline in motion. I sometimes wish I could be still for a while. While I’m admitting things, I should say that I looked up the quote to make sure I got it just right, and I’m not even planning on sending this letter. I walked into a muggle bookstore and I swear the attendant fell in love with me. Happy birthday, liebling.

Death is a friend to no one, Alba, are you old enough to feel it? There is no recipe for eternal life. I hope you enjoy sweating in the kitchen as you guess at measurements, you always did want to play the homemaker. I hope Death is a kinder mistress.

Go ahead and flounder in it, one day you'll learn that there's no place for us in aprons. I won't tell you not to, my darling; I, for one, am a gentleman.

I don't have the heart to break your...ambitions of domesticity.

I hope you have fun with Nichola Flamel in some summer suite in Cairo, far away from her pesky husband. Close your eyes and think of me. Congratulations on your column in Transfiguration Today, it reads both forced and five years too young.

Anyway.

I killed a man today, wandlessly and with vigor. As my worthless muggle father would say: "Whoever, at any time, has undertaken to build a new heaven has found the strength for it in his own hell." Or was that Nietzsche?

I so desire to send this letter, now, for I know just how much it would irk you.  
  
\- G. G.

 

***

  


_1938_  
  
  
A. D. -

I’m writing because I’ve forgotten what it’s like to look in your eyes. When I have dreams of you now, I dream of the dream version. I’ve forgotten your pale face with purple lipstick. You are blushing red now, naturally brown and bare lips like an unripe raspberry. They taste like you’ve smeared them with jam and dipped them in pure sugarcane.

You are sweet and fiery as a phoenix, beautiful and bold, ready to rebuild us from the ashes. You take me and kiss me, and scold me.

“You’re wrong, Gertrud. We can find a way around all of this, dig deeper, burrow down with me. There’s room for two in this tower.” I can’t remember if this is how you were, or how I wish you were, or just how I need you to be for me now. We can both be dragons, we can both be damsels, we can both be handsome princes, but Merlin, let us both be something together, instead of so far apart.

It’s gotten bleak now. I miss Austria. I miss the _Naschmarkt_. I miss things I thought I hated, like your slender hands digging into my hip-bone, I miss your snark. I miss Britain. It’s not the same as it was when we were young. It’s still foggy, yes, and rainy, and pubby and all around miserable, but its misery has lost the charm. Most of all, I miss remembering with confidence.

I’ve never written with confidence. I put a quill to the parchment and it spirals out of me, out of control.  I used to speak so freely, but now I carry with me the lump of the future in the back of my throat. It's coming soon, these horrors I have dreamed of. The war is on hold as the muggle war ravages my home. Let me just meet with you for butterbeer at your sister’s bar. I can pretend to be a brass and I’ll show you a good time in a dirty rented chamber.

Is that history, Alba, war patiently waiting it’s turn in queue behind another? No wonder the British act like they’ve a right to every given waterway.

I convinced myself again that this letter isn’t worth sending, because it’s desperate and raw and picks too much on your fatherland. When I look at it and your column side-by-side, it withers. What I said about Transfiguration Today last time isn’t true, by the way. I was just angry, but now I’m tired. Please keep writing, it’s all I have left of your wit and charm.

I’m sure when I take out what’s left of the Muggle resistance, I’ll feel better. It will give me something to write about, light enough for an owl to carry.  
  
\- G. G.

 

***

 

_1943_

 

A.D. -

Alba was a woman who always carried depth behind her brow, impossible to probe (through magic and otherwise), and impossible for most to see eye to eye with, emotionally and physically. Her stature frightened most men away and those who stayed cowered doglike and fannish before her. She was kind and patient, and ultimately uninterested in them. I looked her in the eyes, once, when I wagered my reflexes on a slick rock by the creek bed.

The same day, I kissed her. She wrote me a letter that night. I wrote her back.

Our romance was bright and beautiful and honest, and likely unlike anything I will experience again. It was red and real and elusive to the written word. It was haunting, but impossible to remember. Impossible to dream about. It left me cursing the magic in my blood, begging that Sight go both ways. It was love, young and ruddy.

I never imagined that I was in love with her, but I never stopped looking her in the eye after that night. I had hoped that words and dreams were enough to remember her by, but now I've forgotten. I've forgotten what her face looked like.

I’m sorry, this isn’t a letter. I don’t remember what I wanted to say to you. I just wanted to remember what it was like to look at someone and feel completed. I won’t send this one either. I’m sorry. I’m sorry in advance; we’re coming to Britain again.

It’s a good thing that I’m a better tactician than a letter-writer.  
  
\- G. G.

 

***

 

_Postmarked: 1945_

 

A.D. -

After so long in indifference, the silence of hard work, I have decided to invite you to meet me. The ministry has been urging you to face me. (oh yes, my eyes extend to your government. Let this be a sign of the times, if you will. Your clock doesn’t stop in that tower.)

Because I know their eyes will see this too, let me refrain from any excess. The tides have changed and I write lightly, if you catch my meaning. You owe it to your precious Statute to duel me. Finish me, if you can, or surrender to me. Either way, you can have your Greater Good.  
  
\- G. G.


End file.
